WADENA - The Old Wadena Rendezvous and Folklife Festival scheduled Saturday and Sunday will include contemporary acoustic music and artisans demonstrating folk arts, as well as re-enactors helping to interpret the way it was in the fur trading era on the Crow Wing River at Old Wadena Park, just north of Staples.
The Old Wadena Rendezvous schedule for the stage under the big tent will include the following:
Saturday:
• Margo McCreary and "The On-Time Circus" puppet show will be held at noon. Ms. Tock has set out with her feisty dog, a flock of talented chickens and tagalong mice in her quirky little trailer assembled from pieces of her past. Together they have a circus to perform.
• Galactic Cowboy Orchestra will perform at 1 and 2 p.m.
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• Curtis & Loretta at 3 and 4 p.m. This vocal and instrumental duo features Curtis on guitar and mandolin and Loretta on harp, and both do vocals. They team up to present traditional songs and instrumentals from Britain and Ireland as well as original tunes.
• Fargo-based folk singer Amanda Nygard, later Saturday.
Sunday
• Pushing Chain, a duo featuring Boyd Blomberg and Adam Moe, performs at noon. Pushing Chain play original and traditional music and they are based in Grand Marais on the North Shore of Lake Superior.
• Margo McCreary and "The On-Time Circus" puppet show, performs at 1 p.m.
• Boyd Blomberg performs at 2 p.m.
• Barbara Jean performs at 3 p.m.
The Old Wadena Society has sponsored the annual Old Wadena Rendezvous and Folk Music Festival for the past 24 years. This year a number of new demonstrators and informational booths are planned for the grounds. They will include, among many others, an archery demonstration, basic outdoor survival skills and a "hands-on" BB gun demonstration time for young people.
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The Rendezvous Festival includes the encampment of the Crow Wing Muzzleloaders Club. Outfitted in authentic period leather and linen, these men and women provide the nucleus of a camp of re-enactors who will demonstrate how fur traders lived in the 1840s. Teepees and canvas tents provide their only shelter. The Muzzleloaders have been Old Wadena regulars since the rendezvous began.
Artists and craftsmen expected include blacksmithing; portrait/scenery painting on slab wood; wood carving, and others.
Wadena County native Dick Oehlenschlager, an assistant curator at the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul, will present interesting information about the geology and ecology of the Old Wadena Park region. There will be opportunities for kids to participate in making a birdhouse to take home and to play games from the 1800s.
Admission for adults 12 and older is $8 for the day or $10 for both days. Kids 12 and under are free. Maximum family admission is $25 for Saturday, $35 for both days. The Rendezvous and Festival are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
The Rendezvous is made possible, in part, by support from Five Wings Arts Council, Wadena County, the Staples Host Lions Club and Old Wadena Society member volunteers.
For more information go to www.oldwadenarendezous.org .
